“Oh, f**k,” she said.

“Does that answer your question?”

Even after coming a few minutes earlier, he was hard again, incredibly so. She stroked him from the base to the still-wet tip of his erection. He was big—big enough it made her nervous. When they had sex the first time it would hurt and hurt badly. That didn’t stop her from wanting it.

“You’re gonna kill me with that, aren’t you?”

“Very likely.”

“I can think of worse ways to die.”

He removed her hand from him and she whimpered in protest. Laughing, he settled next to her on the bed again.

Once more he slipped his hand between her legs.

“I want you to come for me. Will you do that?” he asked her.

“Hell, yes, sir.”

Even in the dark she could see Søren arching his eyebrow at her.

“I mean, yes, sir.”

“Better. Now show me how you need to be touched.”

Covering his hand with hers, she guided his fingers to her clitoris. Once they’d made their deal, she’d begun learning her own body and its responses. She’d snuck into the adult sections of the library and read every sex manual she could find, hiding them behind books on fall foliage and European architecture. She considered herself the only virgin sex expert in the world. She should win some sort of prize for that. This—Søren’s fingers on her clitoris—must be that prize.

With her fingers over his, she showed him how to rub her in the way she knew would bring her to orgasm. Her hand fell from his as the pleasure built hard and high in her back. She’d been teetering on the brink of orgasm simply from lying naked in a bed with him for the first time. All her senses were on highest alert. Her entire body buzzed with desire. Wetness stained her thighs and the sheets beneath her. Looking down, she watched his fingers on the most private part of her body. Blood pounded in her ears. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. Muscles deep inside her started to clench and release. She closed her eyes and felt her body rising off the bed.

“Come for me, Little One,” Søren ordered, and her body obeyed before her mind even registered the command.

She climaxed hard, gasping aloud as Søren pushed a finger into her and pressed it against the contracting muscles. It trebled her pleasure as she felt herself spasming around him over and over again.

Søren stayed inside her as she came down from the high. They kissed again, and the kiss stoked the fire still smoldering inside her. Søren kneaded her clitoris again and she came a second time, nearly as hard as the first time. She collapsed onto the sheets, limp and spent.

“Stay here.” Søren slid off the bed and left the room for a minute. When he came back in, he locked the door behind him once more and sat on the edge of the bed. He ordered her to sit up with her back to him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her as he started to wash the slight residue of se**n off her back with a warm, wet cloth.

“I think my brain exploded.”

He paused to kiss her naked shoulder.

“You’ll have bruises tomorrow. On your thighs, on your back,” he said, retracing the path of the pain he’d given her with his fingertips. “They’ll start out pale and turn black soon after.”

“I can handle bruises. I won’t wear short skirts and backless dresses.”

“Kingsley recommends his masochists take zinc. It helps the bruises heal faster.”

“Is Kingsley like you?” She turned around and faced him, her knees pulled to her chest to cover her nakedness.

“A sadist, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“He enjoys pain play enormously, although he can and does have sex without it often. It’s safe to say Kingsley enjoys … everything.”

“My kind of guy.”

“There is something else you need to learn about Kingsley.”

“What?” She wrapped her arms around her legs, suddenly chilly.

“There is God, there is you and there is Kingsley. Those are my three nonnegotiables. You understand?”

She nodded solemnly, wondering why Kingsley meant so much to Søren, but decided not to ask. Kingsley had been his best friend in school and their friendship had survived the death of Kingsley’s sister. Søren called Kingsley a non-negotiable. She needed to know nothing more.

“I may have Kingsley instruct you about our world, the rules.”

“It is that complicated?”

“It is. This world of ours is structured, hierarchical and ritualistic.”

“Sounds like church.”

Søren smiled broadly.

“Perhaps that’s part of the appeal for me. It takes eroticism seriously, treats it as the sacred thing it is, that it should be.”

“This feels sacred to me. It didn’t feel like a sin. Was it?”

Søren turned her to face him. She should have felt embarrassed being naked with him like this, especially since he still had his trousers on, but instead she felt pride in her naked body, pleased she could finally display it for him. He took her br**sts in his hands and held them while he kissed her.

“Did it feel like a sin?” Søren asked when he pulled back from the kiss and released her br**sts.

“No. It felt like love,” she said.

“Your friend St. Teresa of Avila who had the erotic encounter with the angel might have agreed with you.”

“Really?”